=June 24.=--At work all day; in the evening I gave a farewell party for the P----s (who leave on Friday), and invited about 30 people, of whom 26 or so accepted. It would have been preposterously ambitious in England, but here my little house, with the rooms thrown into one, and the garden lit with Chinese lanterns, made it a pleasure to play at entertaining. The room lit with lanterns looked very pretty; chairs and lemonade glasses I borrowed from next door, and all went merry as a marriage bell. Though it was the rainy season, the night was gloriously fine. The Dean and one or two Professors of the University, two clergymen and some minor folk from the Embassy disported themselves like children. Even the Poetess came, and entered into the games. We had a collection of 20 sen toys for Professor P----, and some of the things people brought were charming. By 11.30 all but a select few departed, but it was after 12 before these went. What a simple happy thing life in a Japanese house can be!
=June 25.=--Fossil-cutting all day. Miss _M----_, Mrs. _H----_, and President _N----_ came to see the fossil cutting-machine at work, and also some of the slides under the microscope. They were interested, but of course did not fully realise their significance, for fossils are principally for specialists.
=June 26.=--At 6.30 this afternoon Professor and Mrs. P---- left. What a crowd there was to see them off! By the same train the wife and daughter of the Austrian Ambassador were leaving, and that brought all the Legations’ representatives. Really the platform was so packed we could hardly move--and if there had been tea going round it would have seemed like a garden party. The train looked comfortable, with _wagons-lit_--and every one was entertained by the huge “send-off,” so that few tears were shed--but I am deeply sorry to lose the friends that train carries away.
=June 30.=--A good day’s work. In the evening there was a dinner where met all the botanists of Tokio. One or two could not come, but there were 18 men there. Seemingly foreign food is greatly appreciated--certainly there were more courses than the laws of health allow. It was amusing to note knives slipped furtively down after they had touched asparagus when their owners noted me holding a spike aloft in bare fingers--but otherwise the company behaved and looked much as a similar set of people would look anywhere. The sky, seen out of the windows, was the most astonishingly blue I have ever seen. The soft velvety depth of it suggested the impossibility of stars gleaming on its surface (as they usually do at night), they would have been drowned. The brilliant blueness like that of a cornflower or a solid mass of cornflowers that had flung off their colour into the surrounding air, till every particle for miles, each separate and distinct, was blue. Usually the sky seems a flat or a dome-shaped sheet of colour over us, to-night it was a solid vapoury mass of quivering blue particles--indescribable, but thrilling as an electric shock, and as unforgettable. After we had dined we talked, until I suggested Dr. _H----_ should give us a piece of _Nō_ recitation; he studies its peculiar singing-like declamation and renders it well. Then others sang, and I was convulsed by “Home, Sweet Home,” sung by one of the young lecturers, “to prevent me feeling home-sick.” His rendering of it was intensely funny, but his voice was pretty good. Afterwards he sang a long Japanese battle song. We left at 9.45, and some of us, I fear, will be ill after that dinner.